Get the audience on your side from the beginning: Start with a real-life story that hopefully ends with a chuckle.

In “This Is Going to Suck,” I ask the nurse to call McDonald’s (a fact I want to hide), so then I say, “[The nurse] looks at me as if I’m crazy, which I kind of am. I was dead twenty minutes ago and now I’m worried about work, but that drive-through does not run well without me, and they’re going to have to get someone in.” That laugh line draws at